Karond wrote:Elemental Shield: This is a strong spell, that works very well in tandem with a stoneskin-like spell. However, if your enemy can't deal 1 damage to you because of damage reduction, this spell won't hurt them. Still, this one helps abit with protection against fire/cold based damage, and can deal massive amounts of damage to unsuspecting foes. A premonition and this one and rogues can't touch you.

Karond wrote the above, and the Wiki for BGTSCC says:

You are surrounded by a ring of fire that damage all opponents who make a successful melee attack against you. The damage inflicted is 1d6 points of fire damage, +1 point per caster level. You also gain 50% immunity to cold and fire damage.

So is it true, that if your Caster has DR (either "natural" or from a Spell (temporary)), the attacker will not take damage if they hit your caster?

If say a caster has Premonition up (30 DR adamantine), and utilizes Elemental Shield, unless the attacker scores 31+ dmg against the caster on a Hit, the attacker will not incur the "1d6 points of fire damage, +1 point per caster level" damage from ES.

Correct, assuming 100% of the damage is physical only. If some pissy rogue had a 1d4 dagger with 1 acid damage and for some reason you had no acid resistance, Premonition would absorb 1d4 physical, you'd take 1 point of acid damage and rogue would cop 1d6 +CL fire damage to their face

Interesting! So does Sneak Attack damage also count as physical, in say your example?

I'm imagining a scenario where you have a PTWF rogue type with 15d6 sneak, +4 EB daggers (1d4) going up against a 32 CL arcane caster, with Premonition + Elemental Shield.

The Rogue could land 4 hits out of stealth, say, for what...an average of 51 total dmg x 4 = 204 dmg. The caster deflects via DR 30 pts outright for each hit, thus incurs only 21 x 4 = 84 dmg. Probably half the total HP of the caster.

If the next round would follow in the same pattern, then probably the Rogue would kill themselves before killing the caster (though by the 3rd round Premonition would have warn off from the melee damage totals and the caster would get murderized...but then again, in 2 rounds, one would hope that caster utilized some other form of damage/control spell).

Steve wrote:
If the next round would follow in the same pattern, then probably the Rogue would kill themselves before killing the caster (though by the 3rd round Premonition would have warn off from the melee damage totals and the caster would get murderized...but then again, in 2 rounds, one would hope that caster utilized some other form of damage/control spell).

In this paragraph, there is a sudden and unexpected turn towards realism.

If that's the direction (so: not impossible scenarios just for reference, but verisimilarity), then...no.

What would happen, is your caster would have Mirror Image (and most likely concealment up via Deez's Shadow Barrier, at least), influencing your expected outcome by quite a lot.

Moreover, Shadow Shield's DR does not wear off, so once Premonition is over (and admitting there is no Greater Stoneskin up, which would be already surprising...), the 10 DR of Shadow Shield would remain.

A 15d6 sneak dice, PTWF rogue would never initiate on a buffed arcanist with a ring of fire around him, because he can only die the very round (the self-inflicted damage, sure, but mostly the coming spell while stealth is on cooldown), and has next to zero chances to even hurting the arcanist a little bit.

"Life is nothing in itself. It’s a place marker that proves who’s winning, and we are the winners. Even winning means nothing. We win because it’s an insult to lose. The ends don’t justify the means. The means don’t justify the ends. There is no one to justify to. There is no justice."

Agreed. A caster in the suggested situation would unlikely be buffed with only 2 spells for defense.

There are a few mobs on BGTSCC that cast Elemental Shield, and when I’ve encountered them with a melee toon, I’ve always thought it am irksome encounter to see ones toon killing themselves as they try to kill the foe! So now...I’d like to try it out on a PC and get some payback!!